Elderly drivers should have restrictions. If harsher driving restrictions were put on the elderly drivers, it would avoid accidents and injuries or even... death. Based on the fact that elderly drivers are dangerous, research has shown that everyone ages differently and growing old does not mean that a person becomes a safety hazard. It depends on the person’s physical and mental health. Our functions start declining such as visual impairment, cognitive changes, and reduction in strength and flexibility when we start growing old.
When going through ageing, peripheral vision is decreased as the person may need to turn their head to see to the sides. The flexibility of the eye reduces and elderly people take more time to accommodate to changes in light. An elder person may have to give up on driving at nights and may have to place lights evenly around the room. When going through ageing the eye muscles and clouding of the lens degenerate. There are serious cases of vision impairments such as cataracts, glaucoma and blindness between 7% and 15% of older adults.
A third contributing factor is very interrelated to nursing education is that nursing education has shifted from hospital-based diploma programs to university and college programs. This shift created the need for hospitals to increase the percentage of paid nursing staff to keep up with the demand of related to the void of care provided by nursing students (Fox & Abrahamson, 2009). A fourth factor contributing to the current nursing shortage is the economic stress that nursing turnover creates in the healthcare setting. The nursing profession can be stressful mentally, physically, and emotionally creating an argument that nurses are not adequately compensated for their working environment. With other less stressful professional occupations available to a profession that is primarily female individuals are leaving the profession (Fox & Abrahamson, 2009).
Negative stereotypes can have harmful consequences for the quality of life of older adults and can also result in a major loss to society. With increases in life expectancy as well as reduced infirmity, many adults are aging well, but negative stereotypes of aging may put society at risk for losing the contributions of these vital and knowledgeable people. The potential individual and social effects underscore the need to understand the content of aging stereotypes in terms of their accuracy and applications. It is especially important to understand how negative stereotypes exacerbate poor performance in areas in which decline is real. That is, beliefs that memory is bad in old age can reduce motivation when increased motivation is needed
Patients with Dementia1 can have difficulties with cognitive functions such as memory, language, reasoning, planning, recognising, or identifying people or objects. This decline is beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Dementia can eventually impair the ability to carry out everyday activities such as driving, household chores, and even personal care such as bathing, dressing, and feeding. The probability of suffering from dementia increases with age. Dementia mostly occurs in the second half of life, often after the age of 65.
THE NEED FOR HIGHLY EDUCATED NURSES Abstract The Need for Highly-Educated Nurses In the 21st century, the health challenges facing the nation have shifted dramatically. The American population is older—Americans 65 and older will be nearly 20 percent of the population by 2030—as well as more diverse with respect not only to race and ethnicity but also other cultural and socioeconomic factors. In addition to shifts in the nation’s demographics, there also have been shifts in that nation’s health care needs. Most health care today relates to chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and mental health conditions, due in part to the nation’s aging population and compounded by increasing obesity levels. While chronic conditions account for most of the care needed today, the U.S. health care system was primarily built around treating acute illnesses and injuries, the predominant health challenges of the early 20th century.
With life-expectancy increasing, this problem is only going to get worse. I was interested in the parallel problems in the field of nursing and the field of education – many of the problems and proposed solutions in nursing and teaching are quite similar – not enough incoming workers to replace retiring ones, a need to reduce case loads/class sizes and increase salaries, and a need to improve working conditions. One point Underwood brings up remains a problem, though. She explains that there is a problem of shrinking resources at nursing schools and indicated that in 2004, “understaffed nursing schools had to turn away more than 32,000 qualified applicants.” These numbers show that there IS a population of people who DO want to become nurses. However, changing the working environment, increasing salaries and reducing workloads for nurses in the field is not going to change whatever problem is causing the shortage of qualified faculty at nursing schools, so that is a serious problem that will need attention as
COMPULSIVE HOARDING AND THE ELDERLY PATIENT 1 Compulsive Hoarding and the Elderly Patient Compulsive Hoarding and the Elderly Patient 2 Compulsive Hoarding and the Elderly Patient I. Introduction of the topic Hoarding is a multifaceted problem that stems from several deficits or difficulties. (Steketee et al., 2001) Hoarding is more likely to be a problem when a person ages because people tend to have more difficulties managing their collections of items. As the older population continues to expand in the United States the nurses, social workers and other medical professions will encounter the conduct and behavior of the hoarder. Many nurses do not have the expertise in dealing with this issue but it is now in the spot light because of media coverage (Steketee et al., 2001).
Adult Development and Aging Life is characterized by transformations; every aspect of the human being changes along the whole lifespan during both development and aging. As people get older, major challenges impact on their ability to engage in everyday tasks. There are numbers of known physiological changes as a person get older, which could affect in one sensory, biological and cognitive need. As a result, the elderly are at higher risk for adverse physiological consequences during acute illness, including impairment in functional status at their own home. What are some of the proposed changes we could do to help an elderly couple so that they are more adaptive to their needs?
Injuries - Injuries that occur when playing sports or from an accident, increase risk of degenerative joint disease. Medical history - People born with malformed joints or defective cartilage are at increased risk joint damage. Bone and joint diseases can also increase the risk of degenerative joint damage such as Paget's disease of bone and septic arthritis. Obesity - Additional body weight places more stress on weight-bearing joints, such as the knees. Likewise, obesity may cause arthritis in non-weight bearing joints such as the hands.